The Family Foundation affirms that the children of this nation are a stewardship of their parents and families; they do not belong to their communities or governments. The primary responsibility and authority over a child’s education lies with the child’s parent or guardian.

Some people believe that professional educators, govern­ment officials, and the public education system, as a whole, are best positioned to make educational decisions for children. This belief is typically based on respect for the expertise, training, and understanding of pedagogy and social change held by education professionals. However, parents are often best positioned to make educational decisions for their children. The fact that parents devote so much of their lives, energy, and resources to rear­ing their children implies, on the whole, a power­ful parental desire to do what is in their children’s best interest. Parents are also the adults closest to the children and, in almost all cases, know their children better than anyone else.

Respect for parents comes, in part, from an understanding that families are the basic unit of society. For society to be healthy, families must be strong and for families to be strong, other units of society – including government and its schools – must re­spect their independence. In light of these commitments, The Family Foundation favors the rights of parents to educate their children as they deem best, whether that be public school, charter school, private school, parochial school, religious schools, home school or hybrid homeschool. We also discourage further Federal intervention in education but prefer policies that restore responsibility and flexibility to the local school districts, individual teachers, and parents-those who are already closest to and most invested in caring for our children.